Whose side are you on? 02 May 04

I’ve been asked by Paul Jepson to post the following letter that he and his fellow authors sent to the Sunday Telegraph:

Editor Sunday Telegraph

Sir,

Under your headline ‘Charities spread scare stories on climate change to boost public donations’ you unfortunately misrepresent our article ‘Crying wolf on climate change and extinction’. Contrary to the impression given in your report our article presents no new data and gives no new analysis of the risk of species extinction from climate change. We made no reference to Friends-of-the Earth raising money on the back of environmental scare stories nor did we comment on the fate of any particular species.

In fact, we examined a case of widespread misreporting of a scientific paper. Our article noted that sensationalist headlines had been relayed by politicians and charities, and we remarked in a subsequent interview to Third Sector Magazine that charities have a duty of diligence not just to campaign off the back of news, but to look at the science behind it and make their own assessment. (see http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/biodiversity/pubc/crywold.pdf)

The potential impacts of accelerated climate change are serious and the issues merit considered and sustained public debate. Media reaction to both the original scientific paper and our short comment in Nature magazine illustrates how difficult it is for scientists to convey the complexity and uncertainty of climate change science through the media.

Sincerely,

Drs Paul Jepson, Richard Ladle, Robert Whittaker and Miguel Araujo, Biodiversity Research Group, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

It is really a sad day for science when its’ sons attempt irreparable injury, all for the sake of attention gained from sensationalism. Everyone knows that journals such as Nature looks for the non-mundane subatance of Science, yet it seems obvious that your article was fuelled by the same motive of which you accuse the media and charities.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that media reaction to extinctions and other such attention attracting news will eventually be exagerrated.

Instead of blaming the media, why don’t you good ‘scientists’ use your profound intelligence to give reports that are more easily understood and less easily misinterpreted by the general public? Surely it cannot be that difficult to combine clarity and simplicity with accuracy with minds such as yours!

There’s a wonderful irony in this letter and also the original presentation of the matter in Nature; although titled “Dangers of crying wolf over extinction risk”, the actual content only briefly mentioned what this danger may be and instead occupied itself with misrepresentation of science by the media. Now there’s a suprise.